Exploring the legal battle in Grants Pass, Oregon, where punitive measures against homelessness are at the forefront. Analyzing the potential national consequences of authorizing homelessness as a crime and the broader issues of poverty criminalization.
On this News Brief, we are joined by Jesse Rabinowitz of the National Homelessness Law Center to discuss the upcoming Johnson v. Grants Pass case, which will be heard by the Supreme Court of the United States on April 22nd 2024. This is the most significant case about the rights of homeless people in decades, determining whether cities can make it a crime to be homeless, to sleep outside, even when there is no safe shelter available to them. We discuss the boarder media narratives that got us to this cruel, irrational point.